| This multidisciplinary dissertation draws on philosophy, art history and my own creative practice as an artist to explore the question of how we make meaning. I argue that making and interpreting are two sides of the same basic process. My thesis exploits the parallels between how representations are constructed and how a work's formal properties operate within a signifying context as a common ground of experience as well as knowledge. Consequently, I decided to use the creative process as the primary model for understanding how material objects become meaningful. Because I am a visual artist, I have chosen to use works of art as the paradigm for how we represent knowledge or experience. This approach allowed me to ground my arguments in my own creative practice as a visual artist and critical thinker.;My method of inquiry combines hands-on exercises with various theoretical discourses including formal analysis, historical analysis, phenomenological analysis, critical analysis, stylistic analysis, and semiotic analysis. I examine each of these hermeneutic strategies in order to determine what they have to offer the interpreter. In the process of my investigation, I developed a conceptual model based on the hermeneutic circle, which I call the Hermeneutic Field. This model is constructed from the two essential relationships that govern the process of making meaning: the relationship between subject and object and the relationship between knowledge and experience.;I use this model to develop a new approach, engagement theory, which I apply to the concept of style as well as to understand how to bridge the differences between individual experiences and knowledge of historical or cultural contexts. The relationship between knowledge and experience is particularly important because both creation and interpretation take place within the life experience of a particular individual. My use of phenomenological analysis as a primary critical tool opens up the historical dimension of experience to investigation. This is particularly important because I conclude that meaning is not fixed, but instead derives from multiple contexts, including the history of the art work, the interpreter's own life experiences and the location where the art work is encountered. |
